UCL Laboratory for Language and Speech Diversions

Slips of the ear

No study of speech misperception is complete without an understanding of how inferences are made by the listener. The concept of mishearing surfaces in our lives in many ways, perhaps the most entertaining of all is in misheard song lyrics such as in the most famous rock mondegreen of all: '' 'scuse me while I
kiss this guy'' for '' 'scuse me while I kiss the sky".

A company took these misheard lyrics seriously and creating a site, Kiss This Guy, dedicated to collecting these naturalistic slips.

In much of the same vein, the collection of these naturalistic slips is being taken seriously by academics, since we believe that these linguistic phenomena can help us reveal our speech perceptual processes.